COMMENTARY: Obamacare is this country’s Chernobyl
Many of this newspaper’s readers are worried about a theoretical nuclear accident at Yucca Mountain. Yet that’s a remote one-in-a-billion possibility — if we ever actually activate Yucca Mountain. But Obamacare is a real medical and financial Armageddon. This disaster isn’t theoretical — it’s happening right now, unfolding in front of our very eyes.
Obamacare is like an American version of Chernobyl. Our economy and health-care system are both melting down.
While the media and President’s Trump’s critics focused on the firing of the FBI director last week, everyone missed a few important developments. The firing of the FBI director didn’t cost me one cent. It didn’t cost any U.S. taxpayer one cent. But the death spiral of Obamacare is like a nuclear explosion and financial tsunami rolled into one.
Maybe you missed the news that Aetna is pulling out of the Obamacare marketplace. Last year Aetna pulled out of 11 states. Last month it announced it was leaving Iowa and Virginia. Then days ago, Aetna announced it is leaving Delaware and Nebraska.
No need to guess why. No matter what the company charges, it can’t stop the bleeding.
With Aetna leaving, there will be few or no options left in many states. So, Democrats can scream all day long about how great Obamacare is for the poor. Soon there will be no insurance companies left to insure anyone — poor or otherwise.
But it gets worse. The few insurers staying are charging rates so insane that no one can afford them. In Maryland, the largest insurer, CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield, is warning of a death spiral. They company has lost $600 million so far. To survive it wants rate increases of 50 percent in Maryland, 35 percent in Virginia, and 29 percent in D.C. That’s on top of massive price increases in 2016. Combined, these increases are totaling up to 80 percent over two years.
Chernobyl … oops, I mean Obamacare … is bankrupting real Americans every day. Read the words of a middle-class American who sent me this note Monday:
Wayne,
On “The Bill Cunningham” show last night you stated your health insurance went to $2,000 per month. The same thing happened to me. I am running out of money to pay my premiums now and will soon be uninsured.
THANKS FOR BRINGING THE FACTS. JC
Why aren’t the media talking about this ongoing financial disaster? Few can afford health insurance premiums because of Obamacare. So, middle class Americans are either going broke trying to pay the bills, or dropping coverage. They are losing health-care coverage because of Obamacare. Why isn’t this news?
Before my liberal readers tell me that’s one person, I get many of these notes.
And I can tell you about one more victim: yours truly. I’m “rich” by the standards of Democrats, yet I just dropped my health insurance. I could no longer afford it. It wasn’t the $2,000 per month. That was only the start of the problem. Because of Obamacare, health insurance now covers nothing. Every bill is on me. So, $2,000 per month is really $3,000 per month after all the bills I now pay are added in. That’s $36,000 per year. But that’s before taxes. So, figuring a 50 percent tax rate for us “privileged rich guys” the first $72,000 I make each year now goes to health care.
No wonder I’m struggling to stay afloat. Thanks to the socialist big government policies of Obama, my income is way down, my taxes are way up, my legal bills are tripled (because of the maze of Obama regulations) and my health-care bill is quadrupled. Add it up. This is why GDP is close to zero. The American people are broke and struggling to survive. Even former “rich guys” such as me.
But that was Obama’s goal from day one. Obamacare was always about “income redistribution” to create fairness, equality and social justice. Well we got it. It’s called “shared misery.”
This folks, is America’s Chernobyl.
Contact Wayne Allyn Root at Wayne@ROOTforAmerica.com. Hear the nationally-syndicated “WAR Now: The Wayne Allyn Root Show” from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. daily at 790 Talk Now.